Journey to Recovery from Childhood Abuse

Unmet Needs after Child Abuse: Age One to Three

I am working through a series on unmet needs. The series begins here. I am using the book Beyond Integration: One Multiple’s Journey (Norton Professional Books) by Doris Bryant and Judy Kessler as a guide because the authors did a wonderful job in identifying the unmet needs that result from abuse during each stage of development. All identified unmet needs and reactions of child abuse survivors are from Chapter Four: Lost Developmental Stages.

Authors Bryant and Kessler identified the following three needs for children from ages one to three:

Autonomy

Personal control of body

Doing things “on your own”

Children who are abused from ages one to three do not get the opportunity to develop autonomy. They exist to meet the needs of their abusers. They are not encouraged to develop their individuality.

Children who are abused at this age learn that they do not have personal control of their bodies, which causes the child not to learn how to develop appropriate boundaries. They are taught that they do not control what is done to their bodies.

This results in the child experiencing shame, helplessness, anxiety, and overcompliance or hyperactivity. In my case, I became overcompliant. I was not aware that saying no was even an option. I was in my mid-thirties before I learned that I had the right to say no.

The authors identify the following resulting internalized messages:

I I can’t do it/I have to.

I feel out of control.

I am bad.

I won’t feel.

Those who develop dissociative identity disorder (DID) during this stage of development do so to contain or compartmentalize their conflicting emotions. Because they cannot control what their bodies do or explore how to feel, they opt for feeling nothing. They observe others to learn how to behave. They shut off their needs and feel out of control if they feel need.

I continue to struggle with these issues. I have found that learning how to set and enforce boundaries has been immensely helpful. I used mantras to help me feel better about myself.

Learning how to feel is a continual process for me. I try to stay present and focus upon the good sensations in life, such as how good it feels when my son plays with my hair. If I don’t allow myself to feel, then I am much more likely to self-injure or binge eat. It took a lot of courage to risk feeling, especially since most of what I felt in the beginning was painful.

17 Responses

To quote something you wrote there “They observe others to learn how to behave”. – That was me all the way to the age of 31.
A human chameleon, wanting to appear normal and fade into every background – Strange thing is that this very behaviour brought me unwanted attention onto myself – Felt like i constantly had to explain my behaviour.

Faith, I have been reading your blog for a while but this is the first time i have commented. I just wanted to say that I very much identify with this post and the one before it, so thank you for posting them.

Believing that i “do not control what is done to (my) body” has been a big theme for me that has caused problems throughout my life, even as recently as a few years ago when i did not do much to protect myself from being raped. It’s like I become a deactivated.. rag doll. And then of course I feel I’m the guilty one for letting it happen (which i know is common).

I also identify a lot with these parts: “they opt for feeling nothing” and “they shut off their needs and feel out of control if they feel need.” And like you, if I feel a strong emotion come up and i suppress it or avoid it, it is almost a rule that i will have strong urges to self-injure by the end of the day.

I do not know how to set boundaries. Whenever I start to feel anything I try and get rid of it, whether its through fantasy/dissociating or si or b/p. I have a huge knot in my throat right now because I just read a post on isurvive and it triggered me so bad. fuck and I am at work and I am now starting to cry. I hate myself. feeling is synonomous with being out of control. hope you dont mind but I am just typing now so my hands dont’ go anywhere else. I had a fight with myself this morning. with the mean part of me pk. I was running and I cant remember what we were saying initially, only the she was pissed at me. Finally I yelled at her and asked her why she hated me so much. She said because you chose to hide instead of fight. Then there was silence and then she said something else which was really aweful and mean. She’s always doing that. She does it on purpose because she knows I hate it. Well I am not crying anymore. I dont think I will cut or anything. That one wasn’t too bad.
I am sorry Faith.I will look up the boundary and the mantra comments you high-lited above.

Hi Palucci,
The bad ppl put those two extremes into you. It was completely out of your control whether you dissociated or not. And pk needs to hear you did not have that choice. Both of you are victims. All parts of you are victims. No one had control outside the body. Faith’s thread inspired me to write yesterday. Am hoping other survivors see these messages were intentionally placed in us. We grew up to despise ourselves, our bodies, our thoughts, being alive, wanting to die. wanting to love, fearing love, fearing feelings. All of it. Now as survivors we get to choose to learn what a healthy person feels.

No one blames any of us for being afraid to learn something new that was so terrifying/horrifying the first time around. It’s so much easier to say f*** it. Then I get really angry when I get to THAT point because that’s exactly what they did to us…so often no one outside that world of abuse can comprehend the numbers of times. We were effed coming into the world and we are fighting the world trying to make our re-entry. Our healing is paving the way for future survivors to heal…the ones coming into their 30s and 40s and beyond now. We are their teachers and their hope.

Maybe one day it will make a difference for the current generation. I so hope our new president shakes out the government secrets and gets rid of all connected to it. How wonderful would that be? And why I am so fearful of Obama being in the White House today with Bush? Must be something in the back of my mind or just knowing the terror perpetrated by Bush and his administration on the innocent.

Am rambling. Not in a good place today. Faith, this series you did is amazing. That is an excellent book in some regards and you found them. The only thing I didn’t like about the authors was that their client was so dependent on them rather than the client becoming a person who could function on her own with therapeutic support. I agree with the concepts though.

I was disappointed with the book as a whole because I was looking for something empowering after integration (when I bought the book). There was a lot of “she will never fully recover from X” in the book, which bothered me. I appreciate her honesty, but I wanted to hear that I could fully reclaim my life.

I think it is a “glass half empty” kind of thing. I feel like I **have** reclaimed my life. Yes, there are challenges, but if I wrote a book, the focus would be on all of the things that are great about it, not what is lacking.

I did find this chapter on unmet needs to be an excellent resource. I have not seen anything similar anywhere else.

Hi Faith, no it was entirely my fault. I went past the trigger warning. I was sort of skimming, caught half the sentence and bailed but it was too late. Most of the time I am not triggered, but it was so specific and directly relevant, I was caught off guard. My fault, lesson learned. Thanks for the hug. I am doing better. I see my t tomorrow (thank god).

Grace thank you for what you said too. I am so grateful to you and Faith and others who are willing to share and help. Your healing is helping me and I hope to return the favor one day soon. I try, I share what I can.
~Palucci

If its ok, here is a hug (((Isis))). I understand everything you said. I have a problem wiht the self injury too. You seem to express yourself well through writing, I use writing to sort of write through the emotion until its more tolerable. That’s what I did this morning with the writing above. Maybe it will work for you too.

Hi Simon. I think a collection of your thoughts, written here and elsewhere, would be very powerful and healing.

Faith,
There are so few books about integration even though many have healed to the point of reclaiming their lives. My take was that you HAD to have a therapist for a lifetime if you had DID. I knew that was not the case. It’s take what works and leave the rest. I am clueless as to why no one has written a book about those who have reclaimed their lives. It doesn’t even have to be about integration. Cooperation works too.

I’m not a researcher and research stuff makes me nuts. Maybe we could start a blog where those who have reached that point share their stories. It could be a blog book? Just thinking out loud. Other ideas?

Faith – thank you sooo much for the posts, and Grace & Palucci for your responses. Palucci – I understand the constant battle in the mind with voices. Sometimes I wish my head would just stop…so I use dissociation, SIB, or B/P behaviors.

Grace – I appreciated your response about all parts of us as victims. I need to remember that when my mind is arguing between the parts….”No one had control outside the body.” The perpetrator placed these negative messages in us…we didn’t do anything wrong. I need to constantly tell myself that every day!

Hi palucci 🙂 – Hope your feeling better today.
I have an A4 pad where i write down random stuff then take it into my next therapist appointment. It then gets ripped up when ive been – i think its a way of me trying to move on.

I like the idea of a blog book about people who are now leading successful lives after healing from DID, PTSD, or dissociative disorders. That would offer a lot of hope to those who are still in the healing trenches.

Hi. This is not linked to any specific post; I just stumbled upon your site and have spent the past few hours reading and crying. I’m in a terrible “in between” place. I started therapy almost 4 years ago for anxiety type stuff. We covered my upbringing and I started to accept the past, but as we moved on other stuff started coming up. Suddenly a notion of abuse rose out of the pit of my stomach and stayed there. i have absolutely no memories and spent the past year telling myself that I’m crazy and that I must be looking for attention or trying to fill some need with my dramatic feelings. My brain completely shut down any notion of abuse but my body was awakened and unwilling to let it go. It’s so weird; I’ve never experienced anything like this. For the past few months it’s been getting stronger; it’s like my gut and my heart know something and they’re trying to get my brain to listen. The past few weeks have taken me to a new place. I feel strongly in my gut that I was abused or had an inappropriate sexual encounter with my uncle at around the age of 3. I have read many of your posts; there are so many things that I experienced as a child and throughout my life that seem crazy on their own, but put together they make sense. I vividly remember masturbating frequently as a very young child, around age 4, and it continued throughout my life. I wasn’t just playing around, I was having orgasms. Food, particularly junk and sweets, became my friend and have remained that way. I was very emotionally cut off as a child, but that was mostly because my parents couldn’t handle stuff so I kept it all in and took care of their emotional needs. I was very very lonely, frustrated and angry throughout my childhood.While images and memories arent coming to me, when I relax and let go during therapy and let my words come without controlling them, it seems that facts are coming up. I don’t know if they’re true facts, so I treat them as suspicions. I suspect that there was an encounter and that it felt good for me and that likely confused me. I have spent my whole life, especially my childhood, hating myself very much. Hating my body, hating everything about me. It just recently occurred to me that everyone else doesn’t hate themselves. It’s all I’ve ever known. The past few days, reading this blog and a random meditation book that happened to mention how we cut ourselves off from our bodies, the words I’ve read have triggered the most intense crying, from the deepest parts of me. The words are a relief because I feel less alone, but it’s scary how my body responds to them even when my brain does not. My therapist is being very careful to follow my lead and not push me in any direction, but when he does ask me a direct question about abuse my whole body takes over, almost begging him to keep asking and relieved to be closer to telling someone, but right now all I can tell are feelings, not facts. I know I have to be patient and try to nurture myself and not go looking for memories because you can’t force them, but it’s hard to sit with these intense emotions without concrete facts. All I know is I am not myself and if you have any advice I would be so grateful. Thank you for your blog.

My advice (since you are in therapy and sound like you WANT to remember) is to invite the memories out. This is not “forcing” them to come. Instead, it is making a firm decision that you DO want to remember, no matter how bad the memories are. I stayed in this place for several weeks before the first memory surfaced.